(NaturalNews) Regular readers know that Natural News has been closely watching a situation in Portland, Ore., where city officials are pushing to add dangerous fluoride to the water.

City officials in Portland have done everything they can - openly and behind closed doors - to force residents of both the city and the surrounding area to accept fluoridation, though the citizenry has obviously been getting along just fine without it.

A similar battle was being waged much further east, in Wichita, Kan., but the voters there put a stake through the heart of that effort on Election Day, voting to reject fluoridation of that city's water supply.

There, 59 percent of voters soundly rejected the initiative, sending a message loud and clear that they aren't prepared to allow city officials to force such a dangerous substance literally down their throats - despite concerted efforts by pro-fluoridation groups to confuse them. Voters similarly rejected a fluoridation effort in 1964 and 1978, local radio station KAKE reported.

Fluoride impedes brain and cognitive development

Supporters said what they always do - that fluoride helps prevent tooth decay and adding it to the water would save residents' dental costs.

While those "facts" remain highly questionable, the negative effects of fluoride consumption, on the other hand, are well documented.

"The next time somebody tries to tell you that there is no scientific evidence proving that fluoride chemicals are harmful to human health, simply point them to a new study review recently published in the Institute of Environmental Health Sciences journal Environmental Health Perspectives that shows, for something like the 25th time now, that fluoride damages brain development and leads to significantly lower IQ levels in humans," writes Ethan Huff for Natural News.

The study review, citing researchers from Harvard and China, noted there was "strong indications" that exposure to fluoride - for young, developing children in particular - can lead to improper cognitive and brain development.

"[O]ur results support the possibility of adverse effects of fluoride exposures on children's neurodevelopment," wrote Anna Choi, a research scientist at Harvard, and her colleagues in their report. "Fluoride readily crosses the placenta. Fluoride exposure to the developing brain, which is much more susceptible to injury caused by toxicants than is the mature brain, may possibly lead to damage of a permanent nature."

Paul Connett, Ph.D., director of the Fluoride Action Network, pointed out that dozens of prior studies essentially reached similar conclusions.

'I don't trust the water'

"This is the 24th study that has found this association, but this study is stronger than the rest because the authors have controlled for key confounding variables and in addition to correlating lowered IQ with levels of fluoride in the water, the authors found a correlation between lowered IQ and fluoride levels in children's blood. This brings us closer to a cause and effect relationship between fluoride exposure and brain damage in children," he said.

"What is also striking is that the levels of the fluoride in the community where the lowered IQs were recorded were lower than the EPA's so-called 'safe' drinking water standard for fluoride of 4 ppm and far too close for comfort to the levels used in artificial fluoridation programs (0.7 - 1.2 ppm)," he added.

But none of this hard data mattered much to the fluoride pushers in Wichita. There, pro-fluoridation group Wichitans for Health Teeth tried to compound the issue and muddy the waters.

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